Genesis 1: 14 Then God said,
“Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the
night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;
15 and let them be for lights in the expanse
of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so.
16 God made the two great lights, the greater
light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also.
17 God placed them in the expanse of the
heavens to give light on the earth,
18 and to govern the day and the night, and
to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.
19 There was evening and there was morning, a
fourth day.
In
Genesis 1:3, on the 1st Creation day, God speaks forth light (day
and night), but He doesn’t create the stars, sun, or moon until the fourth day,
verse 14. How could there be light
without the sources of light? It doesn’t
make sense; except that it does.
No
human body witnessed Creation in real time.
The first chapters of the Bible, like the last chapters of the Bible,
had to be delivered by supernatural revelation.
God showed the original author of Genesis a vision.
By
the 3rd day, the author of Genesis (traditionally considered to be Moses) could
see vegetation spreading, sea creatures, birds, and birdlike creatures, not to
mention the unseen microbes all breathed. The respiration of billions of living
beings ascended into the firmament and transformed the sky.
Oxygen
and carbon dioxide displaced other elements in the air. Water vapor exchanged between sky and sea, pushed
back the prehistoric haze. From evening
to morning on the 4th day, the sky became clearer and clearer. Stars appeared in the dark expanse of night. The larger light of the now clearly visible
moon ruled the night. The Earth turned,
the firmament lit, and the sun rose.
On
the 1st day of the Creation vision, Moses saw light coalesce in
space and watched night vaguely shift to day under the thick canopy of Earth’s
early atmosphere. On the 4th
day, Moses saw what the lights in space looked like when the firmament above
was clear enough to refract their light through an oxygen rich atmosphere
filled with water vapor.
Scripture
doesn’t provide properly technical explanations of oxygenation, atmospheric optics, or light refraction. In the
Biblical text, Moses didn’t distinguish between the astronomical movements of
the sun as an independent star in space and the optical illusion of the sun’s
progress across the sky created by the rotation of the Earth in orbit. Apparently God didn’t explain that to him in
1352? B.C.
I
don’t fault Moses for that. Nobody
explained it to me until 1979 A.D.
The
“evolution” of light in Genesis isn’t a contradiction. It’s the accurate testimony of a witness by
vision who did what every scholar has ever done, what scholars today still do: Moses used the words he knew to accurately
describe the world God showed him.
Life
yet to come would enjoy sunsets, sunrises, starry nights, and moonlit skies because
on the 4th day, the breath of life painted the sky.
Oh,
yeah. That was good.
---Anderson
T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and
consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.
Rev.
Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and
director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
Subscribe
to my personal blog www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
You
can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and
clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Support
by check or money order may be mailed to
Miles
Chapel CME Church
P
O Box 132
Fairfield,
Al 35064
